Missing Manservant
by Loopstagirl
Summary: The last thing a king wants on waking up after a brush with death is to find their manservant in the dungeon. Spoilers for 5x07.


**This one was fun! Missing scene from 5x07!**

Sitting up in bed was one of the hardest things that Arthur had ever had to do. He felt weak, in pain and simply vulnerable like this. Gaius had insisted that he was on the mend, but when Arthur had asked what treatment had been used, the old man seemed suddenly very interested in his bag and muttered out a list of herbs that he knew full well his king had never heard of. Arthur was too tired to argue though, thinking bitterly that even Gaius was keeping secrets from him these days. Not that he would ever act upon the treacherous thought, but having been poisoned in his own rooms had left Arthur in a somewhat foul mood.

As Gaius finished fussing around, Arthur rested back on the pillows. At least with only the physician in the room, he didn't have to pretend. Gaius would know how he was feeling, and therefore wouldn't think anything less of his monarch if Arthur were to just shut his eyes for a few moments. The king could feel himself drifting off to sleep, the sounds of Gaius moving being somewhat comforting. The old man had always been there when Arthur was feeling less than himself, and Arthur suddenly found himself wondering how he was ever going to heal from anything if something should happen to the old man. Blaming his sentimental thoughts on the fact that he had once again just been in the fight for his life, Arthur sighed and shifted into a more comfortable position, letting his eyes fall shut.

"Send that useless lump in when you are done, will you?"

"Merlin?"

"Who else?"

"Ah." Arthur immediately opened his eyes again. He didn't need to be a warrior to feel the way that tension suddenly seemed to flood into the room, taking away the sense of comfort that had been lingering before. Propping himself up on his elbows, the king stared at his physician. Gaius was not only shifting slightly in discomfort – looking for the entire world like he would rather be anywhere than here at this moment in time – but Arthur was sure that he could detect a flicker of anger within the old man. That in itself was unusual, for Arthur wasn't sure the last time he had seen Gaius angry. What on earth had Merlin done this time?

"What?" Arthur didn't particularly care if his words were less than kingly, he just wanted to know what was going on.

"Well, you see, Sire…"

"Spit it out, Gaius. Where's Merlin?"

"You might want to ask your Queen that."

"I'm not asking Guinevere, I'm asking you. Where is Merlin, Gaius?" Arthur found that he was struggling into a more upright position as he spoke, knowing that something was wrong. The effort proved almost too much for him though, and he didn't even see Gaius move until a hand was resting on his shoulder, forcing him back down. Arthur tried to resist, but sweat was beading his brow and he could feel himself pant softly with exertion. He let Gaius win, but that didn't mean his steely gaze softened.

"Answer me, Gaius. Where is my servant?"

"In the dungeons, My Lord."

For a moment, Arthur wondered whether the poison had messed with his hearing. There was no way that Gaius had just said what he thought he had done. But after studying the physician's face for a moment, Arthur sighed.

"Well, tell the guards that I have sent for him."

"I'm not sure that they will let him out, Sire."

"Why?" A feeling of dread was beginning to curl in the pit of his stomach and Arthur watched Gaius shrewdly. If Merlin had ended up in the dungeons because of disrespecting a nobleman or something insignificant like that, then there would be no way that Gaius would look as troubled as he did. "What's Merlin done?"

"Apparently tried to kill you."

This time, Arthur was certain that he was mishearing things. That was the most absurd idea he had heard in…well, forever. They were talking about the same Merlin? The one that risked absolutely everything on a daily basis to accompany Arthur out on patrols and hunts, straight into deadly situations without any armour simply because he wouldn't do as he was told and stay behind in the safety of Camelot. But Gaius' face showed no mirth, no fond exasperation over what Merlin had done this time.

Instead, he was deadly serious.

"Wait…you mean it? They think that he was the one that tried to kill me? Who the hell ordered his arrest, this is preposterous."

"Your Queen did, Sire."

"That's alright then. It was all a misunderstanding, a mistake. Guinevere must have panicked when she saw what happened to me, tried to work out who had access to my food, and gone from there. I'll go and get him out right now."

"I'm afraid that you can't leave this bed for a good few hours."

"But…"

"Arthur, you can barely even sit up. Besides, you weren't poisoned through your food, someone administered the potion directly to you."

"So someone came in…Oh my god, they could have killed Gwen as well! Thank heavens that I've already seen her and know that she is okay. She was upset, Gaius, don't blame her. After all, I've thrown Merlin in the dungeons more than once."

"Not for treason." Gaius muttered gravely, and Arthur suddenly felt his amusement at the situation die away. The physician was right. This was not something to be taken lightly, Arthur had to make sure that he got Merlin out and publically cleared his name. He knew how fast rumours could spread amongst the serving staff, and knew how damaging rumours could be, regardless of their truth. Merlin was a loyal friend – not that Arthur would ever say it in quite so many words – and Arthur was not going to let this spiral out of control. Filled with determination, he didn't even realise that he was trying to sit up again before Gaius was forcing him back down.

"I meant it, Sire, you are not to rise. Do you have any idea what it took to save your life? Don't go throwing away all that hard work by not listening to me now." Whether Gaius realised it or not, but his tone had slipped slightly. He was no longer just addressing Arthur as his king, but as his patient. Or more specifically, as the same patient that had been coming to him for years with scraped up knees. It was that change in tone that meant Arthur listened and fell back against the pillows.

"Could you send the knights in then?"

"Which ones, My Lord?"

"You know which ones." Arthur settled back and closed his eyes as he heard Gaius pack up the last of the belongings and head towards the door. He trusted the Round Table, he didn't mind if they saw him like this. But he also knew that they were Merlin's friends, and he wanted answers. Luckily, they had clearly been lurking for they arrived swiftly. Arthur wasn't sure he would have been able to stay awake if they had taken any length of time to get there.

"It's good to see you awake, My Lord." Leon said gravely, stepping into the room and leading the way for the others. Arthur simply nodded, watching them all closely. Why hadn't they spoken up for Merlin? Why hadn't they done something? Leon he could understand, he was certainly Arthur's man rather than Merlin's. But Gwaine especially – Arthur knew where that knight would cast his loyalty if he was ever forced to choose between the master and the servant. So why hadn't he done something now?

"Thanks to Gaius, I am. But it is not my alertness that I called you in here to talk about. It is the fact that I was poisoned in my own rooms." All of the men shifted uncomfortably, and Arthur suddenly realised that he had just made it sound like he was blaming them. Although that was not what he intended, he wasn't going to correct himself either. If they felt guilty, they were more likely to forget their positions in order to defend themselves and therefore be truthful about why it was that nothing had been done to stop Merlin's arrest.

"Or more specifically, I want to know which one of you it was."

"My Lord?!" Leon had gone pale, clearly believing that Arthur was implying one of them had poisoned him.

"I want to know if it was one of you who escorted Merlin from my rooms – where he would have been helping Gaius save my life – and down to the dungeons." The look on their faces meant that they knew where Arthur was going with this, and that their king was far from happy about the current location of his manservant.

"So? Did you arrest him, _your friend_, yourselves?"

"No, My Lord. Some of the guards came in at Gwen's call and took him away." Leon muttered, shifting from foot to foot slightly.

"And you didn't think to protest his innocence?"

"I thought about it. But what could I do, it would mean going against…"

"The Queen." Percival finished off Gwaine's sentence, causing Arthur's steely gaze to turn on him instead. It didn't escape Arthur's attention that Mordred was simply lurking in the background, clearly not feeling like he had the same relationship with both men in question in order to join in the debate.

"You have the liberty to question me if you think that I am making a mistake, I would have assumed that the same thing applies to my queen? You can't have honestly believed that it was Merlin who had tried to kill me?"

"Nope." Gwaine sounded relaxed and at ease as he sat down on the edge of Arthur's bed. For once, the king knew that he would lost the battle to try and get him to move, and so didn't even try.

"I mean, you only had to look at Merlin. He was more devastated than Gwen when Gaius was examining you. You're his best friend, Sire, there is no way on this earth he would ever do anything to harm you."

"And he's your best friend, Gwaine. Why didn't you stand up for him?"

"And risk being thrown in the dungeons with him? On the outside I could make sure that he was okay and be there to get him out when necessary…" Gwaine suddenly blushed as he spoke, looking at the floor intently.

"When necessary? Sir Gwaine, were you going to break Merlin out of the cells if I should have died and sentence be passed on him?"

"Like you said, he is my best friend." Gwaine's words were quiet and straight forward, yet the king wasn't sure whether he had ever heard the man sound so honest as he did in that moment. Arthur knew that he should probably scold his knight for talking that way. But instead, he found himself hard pushed to hide a smile. At least he knew that whatever happened, Gwaine would have done all that was in his power to make sure that Merlin was safe.

"And you?" He turned to Percival next. The largest of his knights merely shrugged.

"I knew it wasn't Merlin. I also knew that you were going to be okay. Why fight it when I knew that it wasn't going to get any further than this. You would wake up and release him. Arguing would mean wasting precious time, time that I wasn't, sure you had."

Arthur didn't have an answer for that. Percival's never ending optimism was something that he was never going to take for granted again. For that man, there was no problem simply because he knew that this would be the outcome. Nothing was going to happen to Merlin because Arthur wouldn't have let it. And the king himself wasn't going to die because his servant wouldn't have let it. In Percival's mind, that was enough for him.

Arthur was finding it even harder to hide his smile now.

"And you, Leon?" As the knight shifted, Arthur let his smile be shown. "Fine, don't answer."

"I knew it wasn't him!" Leon protested, but Arthur could see the guilt in the man's eyes. It wasn't that he thought that Merlin was guilty, or anything sinister like that.

He simply hadn't thought about Merlin.

His King had been dying, the man that he had sworn to follow since either of them were truly old enough to understand what it meant, had been in grave peril. That had been the only thing to have crossed Leon's mind when Gwen had given the order for Merlin to be arrested. Although the knight accepted the servant as one of their group happily – he might have been Uther's knight first, but he had always been Arthur's right hand man – he simply hadn't spared Merlin a thought. All of his attention had been on making sure that Arthur was going to live. Whether he would have thought about Merlin afterwards, or indeed if Arthur should have died, no one will ever know.

But knowing that there was no ill intent towards his servant in Leon's actions, just an unwavering loyalty towards his king, Arthur certainly couldn't say anything against that. Instead, he just dipped his head in acknowledgement of Leon's support and turned his eyes on Mordred.

"What of you, Sir Mordred? You may not know Merlin as well, but did you think that he would have been capable of murdering his king?"

"No, My Lord." Mordred might have spoken quietly, but it was without hesitation. "I knew that it was not him, yet didn't feel it was my place to do anything about it."

Again, Arthur found himself nodding. Mordred had seemed almost more confident about Merlin's innocence than even Gwaine had sounded. He didn't just believe that Merlin was innocent; it was as if he knew. As if it was almost impossible for the opposite to be true, and Arthur found himself wondering what his servant had done in Mordred's short time in Camelot to have caused such a reaction in the young knight.

"Very well. See to it that he is released."

Arthur settled back onto the pillows as his men stood up. He knew that Gwaine would head straight down to the dungeons and get Merlin out. Arthur knew that he just had to come up with a reason more concrete to prove his innocence. He didn't think that announcing to the court that Merlin couldn't have been the assassin just because he was _Merlin_ would go down to well with some of the nobles remaining for his father's time.

"Oh, and one more thing." The knights had just reached the door when they turned at the firm note in Arthur's voice. Even from his sprawled out position, Arthur managed to practically glare at them.

"The next time I almost die, I would quite like my manservant there to order around when I wake up. See that this doesn't happen again."

"Yes, Sire." Even without looking, Arthur could hear the smile in Gwaine's voice. That was all he needed to know and he dismissed his men with a wave of his hand, finally allowing his eyes to fall shut properly.

Just before sleep overtook him though, Arthur finally allowed his own smile to come through.

If anything were to ever happen to him, he now knew that Merlin's safety and home in Camelot would be guaranteed.


End file.
